Need a Great Photoshoot Location in Montreal? Try Breather!

There are tons of interesting photoshoot locations in Montreal. I’m constantly on the lookout for discovering new places to shoot, and every time I come across an interesting spot, I take note of the intersection on my phone. Occasionally, however, I come across a shooting assignment that doesn’t quite fit any of my saved locations, either aesthetically or logistically.
Paul Carter reached out to me for promotional portraits for his upcoming website. He’s a musician who plays the bassoon, clarinet, saxophone among other things, so we needed a photoshoot location where he could bring all his instruments. He had a general idea of the mood and look of his portraits - relatively minimal portraits with few distractions or clutter.

Enter Breather! My resourceful friend Ariel introduced me to this great startup. Think of it as an Air BnB for offices and living rooms. Luckily for us, Montreal was one of the first cities to adopt Breather. These curated minimal rooms are quite affordable (10-20$/h) and have lots of natural light. I could see lots of uses for them: meeting clients coming from out of town, working on a large group project, hosting a small event, and of course, photographing a musician.

I used my Sherlock skills to pick the optimal time of day for the photoshoot; I inspected the photos of the room on Breather, looked at the visible buildings through the windows in the photos, and then matched it with Google Street View to find the orientation of the windows of the room. I always have external lights ready to go, but if you’re going in a room that is essentially a beautiful natural light studio, you need to take advantage of it! I'm excited to see how Breather will be doing in the future, hopefully there will be more photogenic locations popping up around Montreal.